The advent of computer-based client-server platforms, such as platforms for the collaborative access and management of information, has been an important development to the success of modern organizations. Many modern organizations, such as businesses, government entities, or educational institutions, are structured into groups, teams, or other units. These organizational units typically have responsibilities and needs (i.e., interests) that are related to various forms of information or data. As a simple example, a modern technology business may be broadly structured into a research group, which has interests in information regarding research objectives, a design group, which has interests in information regarding product development, and a marketing group, which has interests in information regarding customer product needs.
Since the units of modern organizations may be required to work together on shared or related projects, the information interests of these units may also need to be shared among them. Thus, for example, the design group and the marketing group may need to share their information interests while working on a common project to design and market a line of products to customers. Computer-based client-server platforms, such as computer-based collaboration, platforms, have made it possible for organizational units to collaboratively manage and share their information interests in such a common interaction situation. For example, product development information may be managed by the design group and shared with the marketing group to facilitate the common project. Similarly, customer product-need information may be managed by the marketing group and shared with the design group to support the project. Using a computer-based collaboration platform, the two groups can accomplish this collaboration over a typical computer network.
However, in many collaboration situations, such as the previous example, members of the participating groups may need to manipulate some of the shared information. For example, a member may need to modify the information that is presented or the way it appears when accessed by one member (i.e., on a personal basis) or by all members (i.e., on a shared basis) of the groups. Some members of the marketing group, in the previous example, may occasionally need to update some of the design group's product development information in relation to the common project. These updates may need to be seen by all members of both the design group and the marketing group. As another example, a particular member of the design group may only need to view the marketing group's customer product-need information for certain products in the product line, in relation to the common project, while other members of the design group may need to see all of the customer product-need information.
Existing approaches to computer-based collaboration have attempted to meet the needs of group members to manipulate information, on a personal or shared basis, for their group and/or other groups they are working with. For example, existing approaches may provide a group member who creates a page (or document) of information (i.e., a page author) with the ability to create a page that includes page control content (e.g., modules or routines that display information or data) that all group members involved in the common project can view and that can be modified by the page author. However, these existing approaches typically only provide a page author with a limited selection of page templates that have fixed features for locations, quantities, and other properties regarding the page control content that can be included on the page. Furthermore, existing approaches may require a page author to create and/or modify the page control content or other features of a page by manually drafting the computer code that represents the page.
As another example, existing approaches may provide a group member who accesses a page of information (i.e., a user) with the ability to modify the properties of control content contained in an existing page that the user accesses. For instance, if the page includes control content that displays overall production data, a user may be able to modify the object to show production data for a particular product. However, such existing approaches typically require a user to have the abilities of a page author, as discussed above, in order to modify control content on the page. Thus, the user may also be limited in the ability to modify control content on a page, and the user may be required to manually draft code to make such changes. Existing approaches also typically do not allow the user to modify control content on a page in real-time while viewing the page. Thus, a user may not be able to view changes to the page control content as they are made.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need in the art for computer-based collaboration that allows a page author to determine the locations, quantities, and other properties of page control content and other page features according to the author's preferences. A need also exists to allow a page author to create pages with control content without the need to draft the underlying page code. A further need exists for computer-based collaboration that allows a user to modify properties of page control content without the need to have the abilities of a page author. Moreover, a need exists to allow a user to modify properties of page control content in real-time, while accessing the page.